A second Minnesota teenager has reportedly died from complications of infection with influenza Type A during this current flu season, prompting health officials across the state to urge the public to get flu shots for their own protection. But missing from many of the news reports on this tragedy is the fact that the child in question, 14-year-old Carly Christenson, had already been vaccinated for influenza before flu season even started, proving the utter failure of flu shots to protect against the flu.

As reported by CBS 4 News in Minnesota, young Carly passed away on January 8, 2013, not long after she was admitted to urgent care with a bad sore throat. Believing the symptoms to stem from a mild infection, doctors at the response center gave Carly a prescription for Prednisone, a powerful steroid drug used to treat inflammation, and sent her on her way. But by the next morning, things for Carly took a serious turn for the worse.

According to reports, Carly’s sore throat evolved into a serious fever that included shortness of breath and wheezing. Her lungs filled with fluid not long after that, and she had to be rushed to the hospital to have a heart and lung bypass with an ACMO machine. In the days that followed, Carly was given regular blood transfusions, but these were ultimately not enough — she died just a few days later.

Misplaced faith in the flu shot

On the first day when Carly was admitted to urgent care, both her parents and the doctors at the clinic were reportedly not all that concerned about the child’s mild throat infection, as she had reportedly already been vaccinated for the flu back in August. The fact that Carly had gotten a flu shot, in other words, was seen by Carly’s family and her doctors as a shield of protection for the girl — after all, authorities would not recommend flu shots if they did not actually work, right?

This misplaced faith in flu shots ultimately provided a false hope for Carly’s family that she would be protected against the flu, a faith that was ultimately shattered by the reality of the complete ineffectiveness of the flu shot. Immediately after Carly’s death, authorities actually tried to deny that Carly died from the flu, referring to her condition as “flu-like.” The head of the Minnesota Health Department, Kris Ehresmann, even went so far as to claim that she “could not confirm” that Carly had ever even had a flu shot, even though other sources had already confirmed that she had, indeed, gotten the shot.

Still others have since tried to reassure the public that flu shots still work, and that Carly’s death is some kind of medical anomaly. But the science speaks for itself — in a best case scenario, flu shots provide protection for only about 1.5 out of every 100 people. The other 98.5 people who get flu shots are needlessly exposed to toxic adjuvants and viral materials that could cause them to develop the flu, or worse.

Consider the case of seven-year-old Kaylynne Matten of Vermont as evidence of the dangers of the flu shot. As reported by investigative journalist Christina England over at Vactruth.com, young Kaylynne died last year in her mother’s arms just four days after receiving a flu shot at an annual checkup. According to Kaylynne’s parents, the young girl, who had no pre-existing health conditions and was a very healthy child, developed a serious headache and fever the day after getting her flu shot. Three days later, Kaylynne suddenly stopped breathing and died without warning in her mother’s arms.